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Abyss
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Description
Please Note - The box arts are supplied at random, and we cannot guarantee a particular cover.
The Abyss power is once again vacant, so the time has come to ascend to the throne and claim its privileges. Use all your cunning to win or buy votes in the Council, recruit the most influential Lords, and abuse their powers to take control of the most strategic territories and finally, impose yourself as the only one able to rule the Abyssal people!
Abyss is a game of development, combination and collection in which players try to take control of strategic locations in an underwater city through exploring the Abyss, defeating monsters and gaining allies. Players use their allies to grant them Lords of the Abyss to acquire access to locations.
Once a player has recruited seven lords the game ends, scores are totalled, and the new ruler of the Abyss is declared!
• Age 14+
• Players 2-4
• Play Time 45 Minutes
Abyss is a game about undersea politics (yes, that’s a thing) where two to four players compete to have the most influence, by affiliating allies, defeating monsters, lobbying the council, recruiting lords, and controlling locations.
Components
First, the game art, wow! More than 50 unique and beautiful pieces of art, each one a masterpiece, and only one artist (Xavier Collette) responsible for them all, quite an achievement!
There are numerous components, making up several moving parts to Abyss, some of which are tracked on the fantastic game board, and some of which have their own components that sit apart from the board, meaning that the game takes up a fair amount of table space, which increases in size during play, you have been warned!
- The rule book looks daunting at first as its pages are the size of the box, but it is very well laid out and easy to read, with simple gameplay examples, and lots of great artwork.
- The game board depicts the council itself, in stunning detail, and has space for cards from the main three elements of the game – the depths, the council, and the court.
- A separate threat track, plus tokens for monsters and keys, is used to track what bonuses are available to players who push their luck whilst exploring the depths.
- A deck of small cards is made up of the various ally races (squids, shellfish, crabs, seahorses and jellyfish) that live in the depths, plus the monsters that also hang out there.
- A deck of larger cards show the lords of the different guilds (politicians, merchants, soldiers, farmers and mages), which, in a nice touch, match up with the races of allies and all make thematic sense (for instance the soldier guild matches up to the crab race, and all these lords are depicted in crab-shell like armour, and politicians match the slimy squid race as you would expect). The final guild are the powerful ambassadors, who are their own race of bio-luminescent creatures from the deepest parts of the ocean.
- A pile of sturdy card tiles are used to show the locations that you can control with your lords, featuring yet more unique and amazing artwork.
- The currency of the game is represented by opaque white pearls, which do a great job of carrying on the undersea theme. Players store their pearls in oyster shaped dishes, another great touch in line with the theme.
Objective Of The Game
Players gain influence points (victory points) in several ways, but the core path involves exploring the depths to defeat monsters (worth random influence points) and gain allies; allies are used to then recruit lords (worth varying amounts of influence), and lords are used to control locations (which have their own criteria for gaining influence).
Once a player recruits their seventh lord (or the court runs out of lords), the game draws to a close, and the player with the most influence wins.
On The Cards
The small ally cards are pretty simple, coming in different values within each race, from one to five. These races/values are used to recruit lords. The lord cards are a little more involved; each is unique, with its own name, (fantastic) artwork, value, power and cost.
Simple things first, the value is the number of influence the lord is worth, with some lords also worth keys that help to control locations. Powers range from instant hits (e.g gain one pearl), to continuous effects (e.g reduce your recruitment costs for lords).
The cost requirements show a number of ‘bubbles’ showing the exact number of different ally races required, including one ally type that must be used, plus a number which is the minimum total value of allies required (the illustrated rules do a much better job of explaining this, it is simpler than it sounds!).
The locations are also fairly simple, each detailing its own way of gaining influence points.
Set-up
At the start of Abyss, the small ally cards that make up the exploration deck are shuffled and placed face-down on the board at the start of the exploration track (the depths). The larger lord cards are shuffled and six are dealt face-up onto the board to populate the court (those available to recruit), the locations are shuffled and one is turned face-up, and the threat track, monster tokens and key tokens are readied beside the board.
Each player takes one pearl from the supply and they are ready to dive in.
The Game Turn
On their turn, players will do the following:
- Plot at the court – If there is space at the court (fewer than six lords there), players may, if they choose, pay pearls to lure new lords to the court, giving them more choice of lords to recruit.
- Players must then do one of the following actions:
- Explore the depths – This is a loose push-your-luck mini game, where cards are revealed one by one from the exploration deck of allies. If the card is a monster, it can be defeated (simply cashed in) to gain the reward at the current level of the treat track (increasingly valuable combinations of pearls, monster tokens and keys), or the player can carry on exploring but must move the threat token up the threat track, thereby increasing the reward for the next monster defeated. If the card is an ally, other players get a chance to buy it with pearls (which helps to keep players engaged at all times), before the current player can either take it or draw another card. Cards not taken are moved to the council and gather there in piles of each race.
- Request support from the council – As ally cards build up in the council, it can be an attractive option to take a pile to boost your hand of allies. Strangely, there is no disadvantage to doing this, no price to pay, it would have possibly felt more in theme if you had to ‘bribe’ the council with a few pearls to gain their favour.
- Recruit a lord – By discarding the appropriate ally cards.
Locations
As soon as a player has three keys in their possession, either the keys shown on recruited lords, or keys gained from defeating monsters, they gain control over a location. Each location is represented by a hefty rectangular board, showing a scene from the ocean floor, and detailing how best to use it to score influence.
Any lords used to control a location are placed under it so that their powers are hidden and no longer used, so timing when to gain a location is important.
No Limits
One of my only negative comments about Abyss, and something that I find difficult to deal with in games in general, is that in several places there are no limits to the number of cards that can be in play at one time.
Firstly, there is no limit to the number of allies that a player can have in their hand, so it is difficult to physically hold them all. It is unclear if these are meant to be kept secret, but we find ourselves laying them out face-up so that it is easy for players (and other players) to see what they have. As long as everyone agrees to this we’ve never found it a problem.
Also, the allies that populate the council can just keep stacking up until a player chooses to call on them. This is great as you can grab a load of allies at once, but it tends to be far too many to keep in hand.
And finally (rant nearly over!), when a player gets to control a location they can reveal one to four locations (their choice) and take one, with the others remaining on as these cards are large, if all players choose to reveal four every time, they can quickly devour table space.
Final Thoughts
What looks like a complex, heavy game from outside the box is actually a lot simpler and more straightforward than it looks, and it plays pretty quickly (45 minutes on the box is fairly average). Abyss plays better at higher player counts of three and four (less so with two), and from a complexity point of view, it plays younger than the 14+ on the box, as long as your younger players are okay with the ‘dark’ nature of the imagery (some of it spooks me and I’m not so young any more!).
There is a limited amount of player interaction, mainly in the form of the lord powers, and whilst these include some ‘take-that’ moments, they are fairly light, and won’t ruin the game for players at the sharp end of this.
Abyss stands up to multiple plays as the combinations of lords and locations seen during each game will be different, and the more you play, the more you can try out different strategies for gaining influence (e.g I prefer recruiting farmer lords who have no powers but high influence, and trying to combine them with locations to multiply up those points).
Editors note: This post was originally published on April 30th, 2018. Updated on January 26th, 2022 to improve the information available.
Abyss is perhaps the most beautiful game that I own. It is a set collection game of underwater politics, bribery and corruption. The artwork is dark and moody backgrounds with popping bright colours. I absolutely love it, it is one of my favourite games to photograph in fact. It is just so lovely. But you’re here to find out how you play, so let’s dive in.
Let’s Get Under The Sea, Get That Box Open
As soon as you lift the lid of the Abyss box, you are presented with the beautifully bright board. I am a big fan of my games looking and feeling high end. You have some plastic clear clam shells which are used to store the beautiful pearls that are the currency in the game. There is a shell that can be used as the central bank too. You also have the main board, a set of cardboard keys, a bunch of location tiles which should be shuffled and stacked. The monster tokens also need to be shuffled up and stacked, a smaller monster board with a red monster token, and two decks of cards; small and big. Shuffle both decks quickly before you get to the rest of the set up.
The board is kind of dark and moody with a lot of space. I guess the ocean is vast, and so is this board. Nothing is bunched together. So get that board unfolded in the middle of your table. I prefer to sit to the side of the board as you do need to access the three sections turn to turn. There are three main parts to the board, the top track is The Exploration Track. You place the deck of smaller cards there. Do NOT display any, just leave the deck face down. At the start of the game this will be mostly what you do, it becomes less important as the game progresses. The central semi circle section is The Council where the unused race cards go face down.
In my plays of this game, I tend to use the council quite a bit but my partner less so, I think the game works best if the council is used a little but not a lot. The final section along the bottom is The Court where the lord cards go, this is the larger deck. You draw cards to fill in the gaps which will be the available lords that you can bribe and corrupt to do your bidding. The shuffled larger deck of cards can be dealt out now, one into each slot.
This game has beautiful artwork on the cards, but the thing I like the most is actually the contrast between the dark backs of the cards and the bright neon artwork on the front. Considering the theme is evil corrupt lords that you bribe into doing your bidding, and the vast majority of the lords are really quite ugly looking, I just love the art and think the whole thing is a feast for the eyes.
You need to set up the Abyss monster board and place the red eel token onto the top spot of the track, nearby to this wee board put the stack of monster tokens face down and also the supply of keys and pearls too. Take yourself a clam and a pearl each and then that is the setup.
Let’s Get Playing
Ahead of getting started, the aim of the game is important to know. You need to get as many IP (influence points) as possible, you get these from the lords that you sway, the locations that you control, the strongest allies from each race that you affiliated to the lords when you recruited them, any monster tokens you won, and the weakest ally from each race in your hand at the end of the game.
Randomly determine the first player of Abyss. You can do this in any way you like, some of the ways that are commonly used to decide who goes first is by a simple dice roll, however, some people like to go all out and do it based off of something more personal. A simple google search can give you some creative ideas.
There are three actions you can do on your turn, this is the first of them and we will look at them each in turn. The first player will always have to start by “exploring the deep”, which is the only way to get ally factions into your hand at the start of the game. You need ally factions in order to sway lords which are the main point scoring ability for the game. To explore the deep you turn over the first card from the small card ally deck. The deck contains five factions in five colours; squid, crabs, seahorses, jellyfish (jellies), and shellies (not the real term but I like this better). These come in values from one to five, indicating the strength of the ally. There are far more of the lower value cards than the higher strength ally cards.
Within this deck are also hidden the monster cards too which present you with a choice of either fighting the monster and ending your turn and taking the reward or you can leave the monster and just move the red token down to the next better reward and continue exploring. If it is an ally from any of the five factions then you must first offer it to your fellow players. The first card that is bought from you has a cost of one pearl, the second costs two and if a third is bought then you charge the buyer three pearls. If no one wishes to buy the “poxy” one seahorse card you just drew then you may choose to take it, although for a one value you are unlikely to want to.
If you choose to continue, you draw the next card, again offering to your fellow players. Anyone can buy from you once, but they cannot buy multiple cards from the same player. You can keep going in this fashion until either you elect to stop by taking the card or fighting a monster, or you get to the end of the track. Making it to the end rewards your plucky pushing of your luck with a pearl as well as your card.
Once you have your reward, you then place all the cards you didn’t choose face down into the correct faction area of the council. Which sets up for the second action you may choose on your turn. You can choose to take a stack of face down cards from the council. This is a way of getting multiple cards in one turn, and if you are smart you may know what cards are there already. This is also a smart move as it can get you a bunch of cards quickly, but they usually will be the lower value cards.
Swaying A Lord
You are corrupt and bribing lords is your jam, but how pray do you do so? The third action option is what you are doing everything else for. It is swaying a lord. You are collecting those ally cards for this as these both offer points, abilities and also keys that will help you unlock locations which will offer you more scoring opportunities too.
The cost of each lord in Abyss is shown in the bottom right corner. There will be a number which is the total strength of allies required and the colour that must be used surrounds this, there may also be pearls indicating the number of additional factions that will also need to be used to pay for swaying the lord. I think theme wise that you pay these jellyfish and seahorses for the lords to eat, which is kind of rough, but the lords do look like they would eat them.
What kind of abilities can these lords give you though? Well that is determined by which faction type they come from, the red military lords will have adverse effects on your opponents. Things like making them discard pearls or cards. The green lords will gain you pearls, the blue ones will let you gain additional lords or swap lords around with the Court. Some are one time bonuses and some of the lords have ongoing abilities which are active until the lord is covered by a location tile. Some of the lords will also have keys in the top right of the card. Once you collect three keys be those from fighting monsters or from your lords, you must choose and take a location to control.
The final thing you do on your turn is see if you have three keys in your possession. If you do then it is time to get a location tile. These offer sweet scoring opportunities but they will disable some of your sweetest lord abilities. You may select the face up tile, or you can draw blind 1/2/3 or 4 tiles and select one from those. Any you do not choose will be left face up in the market for your opponents to choose from should they wish later. Having said that, these locations are your points on the line so I ALWAYS draw four if I am drawing blind, I want as many choices as possible to find what works best for me. Once you “use” a key for a location, then you have to cover over the lord with the key you used, deactivating its ability. So you may want to try and hold off on getting that lord with a great ability if you would get a location immediately.
Abyss End Game Scoring
The game ends once a player gets their 7th lord. You need to keep an eye on your opponents as there really is a chance that someone could run away with the victory because you have been faffing about and not getting lords or locations quick enough. It is an eyes up game for sure with quite a bit of player interaction.
At the end of the game, you take your finishing hand and put the weakest ally from each faction still in your hand into a scoring pile first and then discard the rest of your allies. Tot up the scores from the monster tokens you hold, that scoring pile you just made, the base points of the lords that you recruited too. Then calculate how much each of your locations scores, and also the strongest ally from each race that you affiliated. The player with the most points wins, if there is a tie it is broken by the player who has the most pearls.
Expand This Game
There are two expansions for Abyss that are available. The first is the Bombyx Abyss: Kraken which brings in some more corruption in the form of silver pearls. These are worth negative points and can be spent as regular pearls but only if you have no “normal” pearls available to spend. So getting rid of them is tough, but the cards that give you them are simply so powerful. The additions to the game that this offers are relatively small and subtle, which you would expect from a small box expansion, but I do enjoy playing with it still as a shakeup to the base game.
The second expansion is Leviathan: Abyss which adds some direction to how the monsters are fought. In the base game, you just fight the monster and always win, but in this expansion, there is abit more about the fighting aspects. This introduces a lot more strategy to the gameplay in my humble opinion.
Zatu Score
You might like
- Amazing artwork, and there is plenty of it!
- Fairly simple gameplay.. certainly simpler than it looks.
- Great theme, with components to match.
Might not like
- Large (and expanding) game footprint.
- The 'feel' of the artwork may not be suitable for younger players.